Sermon for Pentecost 3C 2025 Fremont

Have you ever met someone who is focused, passionate, “on a mission”? Someone who is so clear about who they are and what they are about that everything else in their life just falls away?  They have set their sights, or set their face on this mission, and everything they do and everything they are is about this one thing? This is the Jesus we find in this morning’s Gospel. Not necessarily the “gentle Jesus meek and mild” from Sunday school days, but definitely a Jesus that has things to say to us. Things that might be disturbing, provoking and hard for us to take in and accept. The Jesus of Luke’s Gospel is a focused, missional prophet. This is the Jesus who in one of his first public appearances reads from Isaiah “because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” and states that “today this has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  This is the Jesus who makes his mission statement with the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor, the hungry, those who weep, the hated and defamed…. Woe to the rich, the full now, Woe to you when all speak well of you…. So….Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

Jesus is clear that it is God’s plan for salvation for him to preach and teach a radical message about the kingdom of God, to heal and transform lives of those whom others cast away, belittled, and spurned, and ultimately to sacrifice his own life.  This is a Jesus is resolute and single-minded and who asks his followers to be the same.

Each of the Gospel writers has a particular focus. Much of Luke’s Gospel that we are going to be hearing from this last Sunday of June to the end of October is really a story of Jesus’ mission journey to Jerusalem and his ultimate mission of sacrifice. We have the opportunity to watch him, to listen, to learn about the Jesus that we too are invited to follow on this radical and transformational path.

So today we find Jesus and the disciples he has called to go with him on the first part of his journey to Jerusalem. He has sent the messengers ahead and in the first Samaritan village they come to, they are not been well-received.  So the disciples ask Jesus if he would like them to have the people of the village toasted by heavenly fire.  Oh, my.  Jesus, we are told, “rebuked” them.  That must have been an interesting moment, as once again these very people who had been called by Jesus as disciples seem to be struggling a bit with the message he has been trying to teach them so far. However, apparently as they go along, things begin to look up.  People begin to offer to follow Jesus.  Why, we might wonder, would anyone even want to follow this prophet? His responses are sharp, to the point and on message for the kingdom mission.  Apparently, he is not concerned with winning popularity contests or raising the numbers of his followers, but with letting people in on the truth of it….this life of discipleship requires something of you….a total commitment, a radical change and transformation from the old way of looking at and doing things.  In the prevailing patriarchal system, a father, or father-figure had absolute power to rule and that power was often misused and abused.  Jesus was saying, “There is another power that is greater.”  In the kinship culture of the time, family ties were truly binding, and sometimes in ways that kept people bound ….and Jesus was saying, those too can be loosed for true freedom.”  In essence anything can be turned upside down if need be for the kingdom’s sake…don’t be stuck in old lives and beliefs, in your old minds and hearts! So much more is possible, come follow me if you dare.

There before us is this Jesus. The same one who stood before the disciples that day in Samaria with his face set on Jerusalem. And he says to us as he said to the people there, “Follow me…..”  Of course we have some rather important benefits here. We know the rest of the story without a doubt.  What came next, and next and next…. Now that might be a good thing….or not.  We know that following Jesus just might get us crucified.  But then again we believe in the hope of the resurrection…..so…..there is that, too.

One short life we have to live….on this planet anyway. And we are all called by virtue of our baptism to be part of this journey with Jesus….Galatians reminds us that we are given freedom through Jesus to live in the gifts of His spirit. We all get to work out just how we do it, just how we work out our own discipleship, our own vocation, our own response to Jesus’ call in this time and place.  We get to decide if we can do whatever we are called to in that moment….if we will drop it all and follow the way of love or if we find reasons we need to say “no not now, I have this or that to do first.” Are we brave enough, hopeful enough, trusting enough to be true followers of Jesus who will speak for the marginalized, take stands for those who are being silenced and oppressed, say no to anything that is not of love, not of God?  We have some time over the next months to observe this radical missional Jesus as we hear the Gospel of Luke, to watch him, to listen to him and come to know him better, and perhaps to reflect on how this mission of his can become ours, how we too can set our faces to the task of being God’s hands and feet and voice in our time that is set before us as his disciples, of knowing just what we will say when he says, “follow me.” Amen.